Darwin was not his given name. He was being treated for HIV/AIDS at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. As the hospital's senior chaplain, I visited him often. He was in tears as he told me that when his disease was known to his family he was rejected. When he went to church one Sunday, he was met by the pastor and two church officials at the door, and they denied him the right to enter the church. Again, he cried for being turned away. As his condition worsened I visited him daily. As I entered his room one day I was surprised to see him holding a teddy bear in his arms.

Three men who were sexually abused by a church youth-ministry leader years ago experienced a measure of justice Wednesday as they confronted their abuser in court, read emotion-charged statements about how his crimes have damaged their lives, and heard a judge sentence him to 16 years in prison. Jediah Tanguay, 33; Benjamin Tanguay, 31; and Roger Robbins, 30, were minors in the 1990s when Raymond Fernandez, then a longtime youth leader at Greater Grace World Outreach Church in East Baltimore, has admitted he molested them.

By George W. Cornell and George W. Cornell,AP Religion Writer | September 28, 1990

NEW YORK -- Religious leaders yesterday condemned a new movie rating system as pandering to "sexually exploitative material."The church officials urged the Motion Picture Association of America to reconsider its action replacing the "X" rating with the new "No Children" or "NC-17" rating."

Ron Spencer, an artist who twice restored the painted designs on a Linthicum church's ceiling and walls, died Wednesday of bone cancer at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 67. Mr. Spencer, who lived in Baltimore, graduated from Baltimore City College in 1965 and from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1971. He was active in the civil rights movement and in Vietnam War protests, said a longtime friend, John Oden of Baltimore. But most of Mr. Spencer's life centered on art. Prolific and detail-oriented, his work ranged from murals to ink-and-colored-pencil drawings to posters for Baltimore's Sowebo art and music festival.

Three leaders of a Woodbine church admitted yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to illegally smuggling aliens into the United States on student and religious visas and then forcing them to clean apartments and bookstores.The three organizers of the Word of Faith Outreach Organization, located in a large home in western Howard County, pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement to committing visa and immigration fraud and illegally bringing a dozen Estonians to Maryland.The pastor, Joyce E. Perdue, 55, and Robert C. Hendricks, 37, the assistant pastor, likely face two years in prison.

A group of Baltimore-area church leaders plan to press state and local officials Thursday night to ensure that the influx of jobs and people from military base realignment does not harm Maryland's environment or the region's working families. Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon and several legislators are expected to attend the meeting of BRIDGE, a coalition of area congregations committed to improving social equity, said Gary Gillespie, a spokesman for the group. BRIDGE stands for Baltimore Regional Initiative Developing Genuine Equality.

BEIJING - Leaders of the official Protestant church defended China's policies on religious freedom last week, asserting that a record 15 million Chinese now worship in approved Protestant churches and that persecution of so-called underground Christians is rare. At a news conference that appeared intended in part to contradict reports - like one from the State Department Sept. 5 - that religious persecution in China is on the rise, the church leaders charged that meddling by hostile foreign evangelists has caused many of the reported conflicts between Christians and the police.

After making emotional appeals for mercy while acknowledging responsibility for illegally bringing a dozen young people to the United States and forcing them to work at menial jobs, three leaders of a Woodbine church were sentenced to prison terms yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.The events leading to yesterday's action began in 1992, when organizers of the Word of Faith World Outreach church left Maryland for Estonia, a small country on the Baltic Sea.After delivering Bibles and preaching for several years, church leaders returned with young Estonians under religious and student visas.

During the five-hour ride down from upstate New York to yesterday's Christian conference in Lutherville, Jay LaScolea was looking forward to gaining some information - and some inspiration. By lunchtime at the one-day conference for pastors and church leaders at Trinity Assembly of God, he was declaring the trip worth the trouble. "Just the passion these guys have to reach 1 billion souls, it's incredible," said LaScolea, a staff pastor at Victory Highway Wesleyan Church in Painted Post, N.Y. "I'm fired up."

Facing the downtown entrance to the Jones Falls Expressway, a huge banner on the whitewashed wall of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church confronts thousands of commuters with its urgent message: "War is not the answer." At the other end of the JFX, cloistered nuns in a Lutherville monastery sit Tuesday nights in silence, praying for peace. A Lutheran church in Pimlico charters buses to anti-war marches. A peace candle burns night and day in an Episcopal church in Bolton Hill. Through social and spiritual action, in sermons and statements, leaders of many mainline denominations are mobilizing a vocal religious movement against a possible war in Iraq.

An upstairs room at Asbury Methodist Church is stuffed with memorabilia and documents of the Annapolis church, from faded photos of generations of church leaders to mugs commemorating the recent 200th anniversary. The filing cabinets that line a back wall in this informal exhibit space contain a trove of church records - births, deaths and marriages among them. The glass cabinets elsewhere in the room hold other items, including a tea kettle that a century ago sat on a wood-fired stove in the church, used to boil water for tea for the pastor and his visitors.

Meeting for the first time since voters in Maryland and two other states legalized same-sex marriage, members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Tuesday that they have no plans to soften their position that genuine marriage can occur only between one man and one woman. "Are [the results] concerning? Sure they are," William E. Lori, the archbishop of Baltimore, said between sessions at the organization's fall general assembly in Baltimore, which has drawn about 300 bishops and archbishops to the Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Harbor East this week.

I appreciated Dan Rodricks ' insightful and compassionate column on the arguments against marriage equality being made by some church leaders, based on parts of the Bible that condemn homosexuality as "an abomination worthy of death" ("Same-sex unions: What would Jesus do?" Oct. 25). As a student of the Old Testament, I examined the Book of Leviticus, from which that phrase is drawn, as well as other parts of the Bible. Sure enough, a man lying with another man commits a mortal sin. But lo and behold: In the Book of Exodus, working on the Sabbath is also a mortal sin. Elsewhere in Leviticus, a man who eats shellfish or pork, or cuts his hair and beard, also commits acts worthy of death.

A day after his housemate was reported missing in Harford County, Alexander Kinyua went to church with his family and asked the pastor if he could borrow a Bible. "I said, 'Sure, take it, but bring it back,' " Pastor Eric T. Campbell, of Baltimore's Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church on East North Avenue, recounted Sunday. Campbell said he was unsure whether Kinyua did take a Bible with him last Sunday, three days before the Morgan State University electrical engineering student was charged with killing 37-year-old Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie and confessed to eating some of the man's internal organs.

Pastors are charged with the heavy responsibility of leading His people to experience God's saving grace. We must fervently defend God's word with strength and humility. Our burden is light because we are powerless. All the power in this world derives from God's love. I am moved to pray to truly know God's law. In Leviticus 20:22 God teaches us to obey his law. Every pastor has read the Bible's 12 passages with terms commonly identified with homosexuality. I pray we learn to love to learn the contextual truths of the Bible.

The man who police say shot and critically wounded a co-rector and killed another worker at an Ellicott City church last week was angry about being told to limit his visits to the food pantry, church leaders said in a statement on Saturday. The shootings of the two women have plunged the congregation of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, founded in Howard County in 1842, into mourning. The church has announced a private service for Sunday at 10 a.m. The statement from the church says a custodian found the victims in an office.

After months of laboring at menial jobs for the pastor of a Woodbine church, a young Estonian immigrant says she faces another injustice: a forced return to her country and a family that doesn't want her back."

Two months after three leaders of a Woodbine church pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to smuggle young aliens into the United States and forcing them to labor at menial jobs, their parishioners told a different story yesterday during a sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court.They said church leaders didn't mistreat the Estonian immigrants, who arrived in Maryland on student and religious visas. They testified the Estonians seemed to enjoy living with church organizers."They were a joyful bunch of kids," said Tom Goodling, a parishioner from Elkridge, referring to the Estonians.

Bullying is something we are trying to teach are children not to do, yet some African-American and Catholic churches in our state are prime examples of bullies. The vitriol from some clergymen against gay marriage is disgusting and hateful. These "leaders" are encouraging bullying against gay people. It is dangerous to teach their congregations to hate and be intolerant. Put simply, it is bullying. That is what it will lead to in schools, in our children, in adults. Gay marriage is now the law, and these churches are trying to take away that right of security between consenting adults who don't affect these churches.

One of my most conservative friends is Catholic, but he is not a "conservative Catholic. " In my book, he'd only be a conservative Catholic if he opposed the death penalty (he supports it), opposed abortion (he believes women should have the right to chose) and engaged in natural family planning (he appreciates the fact that all women he's had sex with, including his wife, used the Pill or another artificial contraceptive to avoid unwanted pregnancy). His opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage puts him in agreement with the leadership of his church.